Curious Minds at Work

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with New Year’s resolutions. We love that feeling of a fresh start. But we hate how our commitments seldom make it to Valentine’s Day. So what if this year we had an expert teach us how to do it right?  Ayelet Fishbach is that expert. She’s a social psychologist at the University of Chicago and author of the book, Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. In this interview, we talk about how to choose goals that energize us and how to pair them with incentives that keep us motivated. We also discuss a system for simultaneously working on multiple goals. Finally, we learn about the power of social support and how we can get it. Episode Links Immediate Rewards Predict Adherence to Long-term Goals The Structure of Intrinsic Motivation You Think Failure is Hard? So Is Learning From It Slacking in the Middle Pursuing Goals with Others Marie Curie and Pierre Curie Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner  The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

Azeem Azhar, an expert on the impact of technology on society and the economy, discusses the rapid pace of technological change. He contrasts the slow evolution of 20th-century innovations with today's exponential advancements, revealing the growing gap in policies to manage these changes. Azhar highlights the transformation in business models of tech giants and the need for updated regulations. He also emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary thinking to tackle complex societal challenges and encourages active participation in navigating this evolving landscape.

Just a few years ago, the possibility of working from anywhere made us wistful. With family and friends, we’d play the “what if” game: What if we could work from home? What if we could live somewhere warmer? What if we could move to another country? When the pandemic hit and remote work made “what if” possible, some responded, “why not?” And that’s when things got complicated. Now we’re faced with a different set of questions; Why should we ever return to the office? When we’re not in the office, how do we make friends? How do we create an equitable work experience for remote employees? These are the kinds of questions Anne Helen Petersen and I talk about in this interview. Anne came on the show once before to discuss her book, Can’t Even, about burnout and the millennial generation. I invited her back on to discuss her latest book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home. Anne and her co-author, Charlie Warzel argue that, when it comes to what work can look like, we’re living in a time where the answers we arrive at have never been more important. We have an opportunity to make work better. Episode Links Culture Study on Substack by Anne Helen Petersen Galaxy Brain on Substack by Charlie Warzel The Remote Work Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet How to Care Less about Work The Surprising Science of Meetings by Steven Rogelberg Beginner's Mind by Yo-Yo Ma Beyond Collaboration Overload by Rob Cross The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

There are countless benefits to collaboration. We get new ideas. Solve problems more quickly. Produce higher quality work. But too much of anything can turn toxic. And it doesn’t have to be that way. Rob Cross, Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College, has spent time with hundreds of leaders who’ve figured out how to collaborate more effectively. What he learned led to him develop a framework to help others do the same. It’s a combination of guardrails and behaviors, all of which lead to more strategic and satisfying collaborations. And Rob shares these insights in his book, Beyond Collaboration Overload: How to Work Smarter, Get Ahead, and Restore Your Well-Being. Episode Links When Collaboration Fails and How to Fix It Collaboration Overload is Sinking Productivity The Secret to Building Resilience Invisible Network Drivers of Women's Success Impact and Effort Matrix Do You Have a Life Outside of Work? The People Who Make Organizations Go - Or Stop Don't Let Micro-Stresses Burn You Out Multipliers and Impact Players by Liz Wiseman The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

We like to think of our identities as singular and stable: I’m an early riser (and will always be), or I’m a foodie (and can’t imagine otherwise). But if we take a step back, we see how we not only hold multiple identities, but how many of these identities change over the course of our lives.  Remember when you were a student? Or a time when you were single? While there are some identities we can’t change, like our race or birthplace, there are many that we can. It’s the difference between fixating on “who I am now” and, instead, focusing on “who I want to be.” And that simple shift in mindset can make all the difference when it comes to living a happier, more meaningful life. That’s what makes The Power of Us such an important book, and it’s why I wanted to talk to one of the book’s authors, NYU Professor, Jay Van Bavel. He and his co-author, Lehigh University Professor, Dominic Packer, share helpful ways to navigate the tremendous upsides and challenging downsides of our shared identities. Episode Links Dassler Brothers Feud Social Identity Theory Henri Tajfel 1951 Princeton-Dartmouth Football Game and Group Perception Yael Granot Leon Festinger Charismatic Leadership and Corporate Cultism at Enron Jay Van Bavel NYU Social Identity Lab https://www.powerofus.online/ Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams by Amy Edmondson Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

How to change someone’s mind. It’s a topic that’s come up a few times before on the podcast. For example, I talked to Jonah Berger about how to make inroads by asking for less. I also spoke with Tali Sharot about how to get further by focusing first on what you have in common. Yet there’s one tip that’s never made the list. And it’s one that’s proven to have an incredible impact. In fact, we’ve seen some of our most compelling entertainers regularly use it to their advantage, performers like comedians, magicians, and script writers. It’s the element of surprise. Michael Rousell writes about it in his book, The Power of Surprise: How Your Brain Secretly Changes Your Beliefs. Teacher, psychologist, and professor emeritus at Southern Oregon University, Michael has studied the topic of surprise for over three decades, and he’s tested it with his students. He makes a compelling case for why we should use it more than we do and provides clear instructions on how we can. Episode Links Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett Sam Harris and Making Belief Confirmation bias Wolfram Schultz and dopamine Elaboration Likelihood Model The Catalyst by Jonah Berger Michael Rousell TEDxSalem Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better by Will Storr The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

We like to think we’re in complete control of the decisions we make. From the sandwich we ordered for lunch to the Netflix show we watched last night. Yet, in each case, we’ve got a hidden partner, one that influences nearly every decision we make. That partner is the designer. Whether we’re reading a restaurant menu or scrolling a website, we’re taking in information that’s been presented to us in a certain way. These conscious – or unconscious – choices that designers make can influence what we decide. In many cases, though, it’s an aspect of decision making we don’t think too much about. It’s this element of decision science that Eric Johnson, Professor at Columbia Business School, has spent his life studying. It’s the focus of his book, The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters, and it is truly fascinating. In fact, I bet you’ll walk away from this interview with at least one insight that gets you thinking about design and decision making. Episode Links The Decision Lab Sleights of Mind Choice Architecture Coffee Meets Bagel Derren Brown Naomi Mandel Query Theory Curse of Choice Experimentation Works by Stefan Thomke Medicine. Do Defaults Save Lives? Endowment Effect Replication Crisis Meta-analysis The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

What do you think makes companies like Amazon or Google so innovative? With Amazon you might say their relentless focus on the customer. With Google, you might point to their powerful search engine or cloud computing. What you might not think about is just how important experiments are to their success. Not just a few experiments, but tens of thousands run annually so they can improve on what they do. And experiments aren’t just for tech companies with lots of data. Running thoughtful experiments can yield innovative results for all kinds of companies, big and small, startup to established, across all kinds of industries. It’s how we think about them – how we design them – that matters. And that’s where science and creativity come in. Stefan Thomke, an innovation expert and Professor at Harvard Business School, is someone who’s spent his career helping companies design and run business experiments. He writes about what he’s learned in his book, Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments. It’s not only a riveting analysis of what it looks like to be an experimentation organization. It's a playbook for building one. Episode Links Building a Culture of Experimentation  The Surprising Power of Online Experiments Creating the Experimentation Organization The Netflix Data War The Discipline of Business Experimentation A Smarter Way to Run Business Experiments At Booking.com, Innovation Means Constant Failure Jeff Bezos on Innovation Richard Feynman on the Scientific Method (1964) Novum Organum by Francis Bacon The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking to guests about our relationships at work. For example, we’ve discussed how to listen better, how to navigate conflict, and how to influence others, just to name a few. What I’ve spent less time talking about are the relationships that go beyond work. That’s why I invited Kat Vellos on the show this week to talk about her amazing book, We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships. Kat’s book is more than a callout to the power of friendship. It’s a roadmap for making new friends, and, equally valuable, it’s an owner’s manual for deepening existing friendships. Episode Links How Many Hours Does It Take to Make a Friend by Jeffrey A. Hall Better Than Small Talk The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker Donald Horton and Richard Wohl and Para-Social Communication Loneliness and Social Connections Choke by Sian Beilock Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg Kat Vellos TED Talk Happy City by Charles Montgomery Having and Being Had by Eula Biss The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

One of the messages our culture delivers is “not enough.” Not clever enough. Not busy enough. Not successful enough. It’s a cultural mantra that beats just below the surface of many conversations, especially the ones we have with ourselves. That’s what’s so refreshing about Vanessa Bohns’ book, You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate our Power of Persuasion and Why It Matters. Vanessa’s message, when it comes to influence and persuasion, is that we’re more than enough. That’s why it’s so important we understand how they work because, like our favorite superheroes, we can use these powers for good or for evil. Vanessa is a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and Harvard Business Review, among other publications.    Episode Links Erica Boothby and The Invisibility Cloak Illusion Thomas Gilovich and The Spotlight Effect  Shared Experiences are Amplified Audience-tuning Effects on Memory Saying is Believing Effect Social Media and the Invisible Audience The Benefits of Asking for Help Frank Flynn A Face-to-Face Request is 34 Times More Successful Than An Email Marianne LaFrance Mary Carskadon and Brown University Sleep Lab Prison Book Program Adam Galinsky and Power Perspectives Not Taken The Burden of Power: Construing Power as Responsibility Chatter by Ethan Kross Mindwise by Nicholas Epley Kurt Lewin To Reduce Sexual Misconduct, Help People Understand How Their Advances Might Be Perceived The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.